


you're never alone

by ricecrispbees



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Character Study, No Plot/Plotless, Platonic Relationships, agender characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2021-01-23 22:11:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21327493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ricecrispbees/pseuds/ricecrispbees
Summary: marion--if that is even her name--is sad. mangle is a friend.
Kudos: 14





	you're never alone

**Author's Note:**

> fuck it, i don't even have an explanation for this  
haven't written fnaf in ages so i figured hey, might as well clean up & publish this oldie. so here we are.  
pls enjoy.

The doll had a name.

Nobody remembered it; hell, she hardly remembered it herself. In her mind, if she tried to recall it, all she’d turn up would be a blob of wordless and colorless shapes that ultimately meant nothing. Every day, she sat motionlessly in her box and overheard scores of children’s names: Jack, Andy, Bella, Sydney, Benjamin to name a few, and none of them ever rang a bell. Every day until nightfall, she sat in her box, occasionally coming out on command to entertain children at their birthday parties.

How jealous she was of these kids and their happy days. How she loathed being a bystander and not a participant in the festivities. How she wanted to be in her old body again, how she wanted to be a child again. The doll grew tired of her new body quickly, the stuffing inside and felt ‘skin’ outside were uncomfortable and suffocating. The long body and limbs of the doll itself were disturbing even to the one possessing it. That was why she enjoyed staying in the box, and the nighttime; it was cooler in the shade, and it was cooler in the dark.

For how long had she been dead? The doll--or, really, the spirit inside of it--no longer remembered. She probably didn’t want to remember, either, so she never attempted to ask any of the other characters. She made a point of avoiding them most of the time, anyhow. The mere sight of them and their taller, more functional and visually appealing bodies filled her with such a sickeningly hot jealousy that she had to try not to lash out violently at them. Even Mangle in all his ruined glory made her feel that way, and the doll stayed within her box every day to keep their spite and hatred hidden away from view inside her cotton-stuffed body.

None of the other animatronics knew what to call her, so on the rare occasions where the night sat heavily over the restaurant like a downy blanket and the doll came out of her box, they referred to her as the ‘Marionette’. She seemed to approve of the name, or at the very least, she never objected to it verbally. She hadn’t any mechanisms in her face, after all, to change her expression, and as such it was a mystery to all that encountered her what her true feelings really were. 

One night, the doll left her box completely, solely out of curiosity to see what the night was like. She wasn’t used to walking unassisted much, even before her untimely death, and the long limbs of her body were of no help. Mangle, aimlessly crawling about the walls of the establishment, had spotted her struggling to move about the prize room, trying to hold onto the glass counter by her box with her handless appendages.

“Dear me, Marion-n-n-nette!” He called from the ceiling, his staticky voice cracking and jumping all about. At times his voice box sounded less like such and more like a stuck record. “You seem to be having some trouble!”

“Really?” The doll looked up at him, the whites of her eyes shifting to a distrustful semicircle shape. Her voice carried itself throughout the room like a gust of wind like a whisper that could only be heard through a strain of the ear. “And how could you tell?”

“C-come on-n-n!” Mangle scuttled down the wall and rested himself on the prize counter. In this state, he was about collar-level with the doll, a revelation that only slightly intimidated him. “M-m-maybe I can h-h-help you move around s-s-s-some more!”

The doll considered it. Mangle was a lot more mobile than she was, after all, so it wasn’t a bad suggestion.

“Why would you want to do that? I’ll just be a liability to you.” The doll shook her head, limping back to her box. “I will just go back inside now.”

“W-whaaaat? Marione-ne-ne-nette!” Mangle crawled on top of her box so she couldn’t lift the lid, much to the doll’s annoyance. “But I w-want to show you around! I never see you out of your b-b-box!”

The doll stood frozen in her place. Mangle...wanted to spend time with her? How unexpected, she thought. The realization was surprisingly pleasant, and she nodded.

“Well, alright. I’ll let you carry me, but I’d like to be put back in my box soon.” The doll agreed and Mangle made a strange noise she figured was his equivalent to cheering.

“Hoora-a-a-ay!” Two metallic limbs shot out from behind Mangle’s head and wrapped themselves around the doll, holding her against a large metal structure in his mass of broken body parts that may have once belonged to a torso. “Hold on t-t-tight!”

With that, he raised them so they dangled from the ceiling once again, Mangle pinning Marionette to himself for dear life. Marion was, for once, feeling rather fortunate about the fact that breathing was no longer something she had to occupy herself with.

“W-w-where to?” Asked the robot, scuttling across the roof and out of the party room. The doll considered the question and realized quite quickly she had a minimal idea of what this place contained.

“I don’t care,” She responded, though in truth she didn't know where there was to go at all. “So long as it is not here, I will be happy.”

Mangle acknowledged this with a nod and crawled along the ceiling out of the room into a hallway.

“If you b-b-arely know the place,” He said, “I may as well just sh-sho-show you around!”

And he did. Mangle took the doll through the hallways, through all the party rooms and vents, and even to the main stage area where three other animalistic animatronics stood, motionless. The doll found them rather strange. They were tall, and hard-looking the way Mangle was, except they were all put together. From the way they were constructed, they appeared to be in a perpetual state of happiness, too. She envied that happiness even if it was not real.

“Those are the ss-s-stars of the show hhhere!” Mangle said to her. “That’s Chica, and that’s Freddy, and that’s Bonnie!” He pointed out each bot in turn with an unreasonably flexible and twitchy mechanical arm.

“I see.” She had heard of them before. The children spoke praise of them often, and sometimes if she strained her senses she could hear them singing from her corner in the prize room.

“A-a-and, you know what else?” Mangle paused. “They’re just like us.”

“What does that mean?” The doll asked.

Mangle smiled. "I w-w-will shooow you."

They climbed down the side of the wall, across the floor of the main stage until he rested at the foot of the big bear animatronic, Toy Freddy.

"Tooooy Freddy-y-y-y!!!" His mechanical voice strained and broke as he nudged at the ankle of the animatronic. "Wakey-wakey!"

To the shock of the doll, Freddy turned his head around and stared down at them. There was the illusion of life in his pale blue eyes as he appraised the pair before him.

"Mangle," The bear's voice was much smoother than Mangle's and more coherent, but also nasally in a way that made the doll almost smile. "What a surprise! The night guard won't be here for another hour or so. What are you doing up?"

"Marion w--wuh--wanted a tour!" As if to emphasize her, he curled up on himself slightly and raised the doll up slightly higher. "S-s-say hello!"

Marion stared up at Freddy skeptically. "Hello?"

"Huh." Freddy tilted his head to the side slightly. "You're much taller than I thought you'd be!"

The doll self-consciously curled up on herself at that. "Don't point out such things," She complained. "I don't like this form very much."

"Oh! I'm sorry," The bear apologized. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

The doll acknowledged this but did not look at him. "What did you mean when you said he is like us?" She asked the heap of mismatch parts and scraps beneath her. Mangle hummed and whirred in thought. 

"U-u-uhh," He looked up at the bear animatronic for some help. "It's complicated?"

Something about Toy Freddy's countenance shifted. Marion could not describe it beyond his eyes appearing to, for once, hold some life to them despite their plastic state. "Ohh," He said, and there was a whisper behind his voice like that of a child's. "You've got one too. I thought you were the only one lacking."

"Lacking what?" Asked Marion cautiously. The bear bent over as much as his animatronic body would allow and he looked at her, those pale blue eyes threatening to see through the very mask stitched onto her face.

"A soul." He said, and there was that whisper again.

"_Oh_," The doll, were she to be in possession of a pair of eyebrows, would have raised them high enough for them to drop off her head.

"How long have you been here?" Freddy's voice sounded less nasally, less mechanical and more human-like with each syllable. "It's been a month for me."

Marion startled slightly at this. "I wouldn't know," She said, rather defensively, "And more importantly, how would _you_ know?"

Freddy shrugged. "Dunno. I just kind of do." Something resembling a smile crept across his face. "Do you know the night guard?"

The doll did not know of any 'night guard', or any humans at all aside from the children and their parents who occasionally visited the prize corner.

"He," The bear explained, "Is working with the people who put us in these suits. He's a very bad man. Every night, the other animatronics and I try to get him. Payback for what he did to _us_, you see. But I never see you out at night. I just thought for a while that you didn't have the same desire for vengeance as we did."

It felt all of a sudden like a whole new angle of her world had been revealed to her. Marion felt her overstuffed joints go weak and she was glad Mangle was under her for support. She was silent for a long while, processing what she'd just been told. There was a man, and he was a night guard. He came at night, and assuaged her with the music box to keep her complacent so she wouldn't know he existed. Said night guard was, if Freddy's words were anything to go by, at the very least conspiring with the man who took her life and at worst the man who did it in the first place. Toy Freddy thought she hadn't the same will for vengeance that he did, but oh, after learning of this he was so very, very wrong.

"What can I do to help?" She asked, animosity woven into the harsh whisper of her voice.

Toy Freddy and Mangle looked at one another.

"We will help _you_," Said the bear, looking back at her. "We will distract him, so your music box turns off. You will be able to leave your box then, right?"

"I should be able to do that, yes."

"Fantastic." Toy Freddy gave that creepy robotic smile again. Mangle chimed in, all static and broken words and pointy-teethed smiles.

"I wi-will carry you!" He added helpfully. "Prromise! Office is a l-l-long waaays away! We c-c-c-c-can huurt him then."

_Hurt_ him. That felt a bit too soft for what Marion wanted to do to that man, the one who snuffed her out and made her forget the world she'd left behind, but it was certainly a start. For the first time that night, and in fact for the first time at all, the doll smiled.

"Sounds wonderful." She said. "Thank you."

"My pleasure!" Toy Freddy's voice returned to the ridiculous pre-programmed tone he'd had in the beginning, and the last semblance of life faded from his eyes. "Best head back to your box now, Puppet! Midnight will be here soon."

The doll situated herself on Mangle's back again. "Of course," She hummed. "See you later."

Mangle toted her back to the prize room.

"A--re you sure you'll be go-o-od for to-night?" He asked as she let herself off his back.

"Oh, I'm positive." Marion could not remember feeling this excited in a long while. "Be safe. Don't forget your promise."

"I-I wooon't!" The robot promised, and with that, he was gone.

Marion sat inside her box and waited, and waited, and waited, until finally the tone of her music box began.

It was time.


End file.
